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Related to russian intelligence. this seems to be the first reported incident of a granular instance the products were used by russia to conduct espionage in the u.s. is that right? >> that's right. for years intelligence officials had this suspicion and these fears and what we are seeing now is essentially a case study of exactly how they worried that kasp kaspersky could be used by hackers in russia to find ways into information systems in the united states and you alluded to the banning of software on the government computers and that statement came out with the ban did not refer to anythin...

Specific but if you look at the hypothetical scenarios that are laid out in the statement accompanying that ban they're exactly parallel to what investigators believe happened here, that kaspersky was a scout to find files for the russian hackers they might be interested in and hone in on the particular contractor as you noted made the violation of taking classified material home with him from his office at the nsa. >> and, shane, can you tell us from your reporting if kaspersky software was able to identify first of all his computer that there was classified information on his computer, and t...

Of the implications that it helder if other agencies running the software or contractors or employees might have it at home and the kind of school tools and the computer code the nsa uses to spy on other countries. i mean, if you like, analogize them to the tools for spying or the methods for spying. when this kind of thing gets into an adversary's hands, it tells them how to defend their networks to gain information from them and potentially to take the tools and use them against other countries, maybe even against us. it's the kind of thing that you protect as a basic element of intelligence...

It defends networks inside the united states. that would seem to be very valuable information for the russians to have from our nsa. the russians reportedly got access to the valuable, highly classified information after an unidentified nsa contractor took material home from work an put it on the home computer. that was his first mistake. second mistake, according to the journal, the hackers working for the russian government, quote, targeted the contractor after identifying the files they wanted through the contractor's use of a popular anti-virus software made by russia -- based kasper is ky...

National intelligence and the nsa chief all personally asked if they would use the software on their own computers. the answer -- down the line, from fbi, cia, dni, uniformly, the answer was, neit, neit, no way. no. kaspersky denied there's any reason to work and not an instrument aft russian government. in july, nbc's richard engel interviewed the ceo of the lab who it should be noted was trained by the kgb. but he claimed any cooperation with the kremlin was purely defensive in nature. >> never been asked to cooperate in an offensive operation with russian intelligence? >> zero. we are coope...